


Pocketses

by vetiverite



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Bagginshield Eventually, Crack, Gen, Pie, Pranks and Practical Jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 14:20:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20565779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vetiverite/pseuds/vetiverite
Summary: Bilbo dropped the One Ring.  Kili picked it up.  That's pretty much it.  It's definitely not Steinbeck.





	Pocketses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Linane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linane/gifts).

It all started with a pocket handkerchief, or rather, the lack thereof. Reflexively reaching for one, Mr. Baggins pulled his pocket inside out in frustration, entirely forgetting what he had placed in there several chapters earlier.

_Mr. Baggins!_ called Kíli. _Ho! You dropped this!_

But Mr. Baggins did not hear him.

The Ring was too small to fit anything but the first joint of Kíli’s pinky finger. That, it turned out, was enough.

_Who are you?_ Kíli asked Sauron.

_Who are YOU?_ responded Sauron, very much put out at being pulled away from TV time, JUST when Sir David Attenborough was really getting warmed up about hyraxes.

_I’m Kíli! Kíli of the Blue Mountains, and I have three wishes! Number one—_

_You don’t get any wishes, _Sauron informed him. _Ash nazg durbatulûk__, ash nazg gimbatul—_

_Where’s your other eye? Did it get poked out? _

_Ssh. I’m chanting here. Ash _ _nazg_ _ thrakatulûk—_

_Do you like pie?_

Sauron released a sigh of impatience which came as a gust of foul wind, rattling the skeletal fingers of the trees and messing up Kíli’s pop-star hair._Do I like what?!_

_Pie! It’s brilliant! Dough on the outside, but all sorts of fillings on the inside. Who knows? There could be _anything_ inside that dough—or _nothing!_ But then it wouldn’t be pie. It would just be dough._ Kíli grew somber for a moment, then perked back up. _Pie is my first wish._

_Put the Ring on someone else,_ Sauron helpfully suggested. _Then you can go find this pie you like so much._

_No, I like YOU. You’re a stranger. I love talking to strangers! You learn so much! Though my brother always says—_

_You have a brother? Is he here? Let me talk to him for a moment._

So Kíli did. Any friend of his was a friend of Fíli’s; this he believed with all his heart. He slid the Ring on his brother’s finger (some wags said it was bound to happen one of these days) and got the surprise of his life.

Fili got a surprise, too. Suddenly he found himself in a world of strange glowing lights and looming shadows, talking to some stalky creeper who ought to be reported to the authorities. 

_I don’t think my brother should be talking to you,_ he told Sauron. _He’s very susceptible to dodgy characters. All you have to do is offer him pie—_

Sauron had not had a migraine in millennia, and he did not wish to start now.

_That friend of yours hung up on me,_ Fíli told Kíli.

_Fíli! Fíli!_ Kíli could hardly keep it together. _Did you know WHAT HAPPENED when you put on that RING???!!!!!!!!_

Fíli almost didn’t believe Kíli, but he had never seen quite so many punctuation marks.

Back in Mordor, Sauron was not quite as effusive. In fact, he was downright gloomy. You’d think a Maia would have seen it all. But in spite of all, he had to admit that his encounter with the Dwarven pop star had left him in a reflective mood. 

The thing was, he was bored to sobs. Life as the Great Eye didn’t hold much in the way of diversion, and Mordor? Not exactly a holiday theme park. The forces of evil were a bunch of duds. The Nazgûl doted on their fell beasts like a bunch of pony-obsessed thirteen-year-old girls. The Witch-King of Angmar wouldn’t know pie if it bit him on the ass. The honest truth: Sauron longed for someone to _play_ with him. Someone willing to be talked into trouble. He actually hoped Kíli (or heck, Fíli) would put the Ring back on. 

He did not have to wait long.

Thus commenced two and a half weeks of the most juvenile prank-pulling that had ever visited itself upon Middle Earth, except for when Sauron made all those rings, which he really only did for a lark. Together, he and his new friends terrorized dwarf and beast with glue-smeared door knobs, squirting lapel flowers, and – yes – cream pies placed on chair cushions. The One Ring had never gotten such a workout. 

_So what do I do with the trip line?_ Kíli whispered.

_You grab one end, hide behind a tree, and wait for Lord Elrond to walk past, _Sauron told him_. Fíli, you get the bucket of custard ready. This is going to be EPIC._

But all good things must come to an end. Kíli was not made for heavy responsibilities like Ring-Bearing, and so the One Ring went the way of the ponies, if the ponies had fallen out through a hole in Kíli’s trousers while he and Fíli rode down a raging river in barrels.

_WHEEEEEEE!!_ yelled Kíli.

_YAAAAAAAA!!_ yelled Fíli

_Hey, where’d they go? _asked Sauron.

True, he missed his friends sorely. But after an initial period of moping, he discovered that upon falling into the water, the One Ring had become lodged around the neck of a crayfish. Looking at the river bottom through the creature’s beady eyes was like watching a David Attenborough documentary without all the boring narrative and fund-raising breaks. Sauron couldn’t get enough of it; he subsequently chilled the fuck out and stopped waging war on Middle Earth. He never got the Ring back, but he knew exactly where it was.

He decided to call his new crayfish friend Stompy.

Much else that would have otherwise come to pass stopped dead in its tracks as a consequence. Without the Ring, Bilbo was unable to sneak into Smaug’s lair to retrieve the Arkenstone, which meant that Thorin was unable to rally the tribes and claim Durin’s Gold for his people. On the other hand, that freed him up to make other, more pleasant plans with Bilbo, and they both ended up wearing rings after all. Smaug never even woke up, and so Laketown never burnt to a crisp. There was no need for Tauriel to rescue Kíli a second time, so their love was like her role in Professor Tolkien’s original text: it simply never existed in the first place. The eventual road trip to Mount Doom never happened, but the Fellowship still did; Galadriel (who could see the future, and who loved reality shows as much as Sauron did) saw no reason why it shouldn't.

As for Fíli, he never stopped rescuing his brother from dodgy characters. As they say, you can’t have everything. Except pie. You can have _lots_ of pie in Laketown. 

Besides barrels of fish, it’s what it's really known for.


End file.
